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We brought this up back in December when the students initially did the protesting. I speculated they’d have to go into hiding, which they did. After the protests, Ahmadinejad said they would not be “punished”, but “joked” about their fates:
Protesters later surrounded the president’s car, prompting a security guard to fire a stun grenade to warn them off. Four cars in the presidential convoy collided in their haste to leave. Mr Ahmadinejad’s staff later insisted he had remained calm and ordered that the students should go unpunished. But some of those present say he accused them of being paid United States agents who would be confronted.
“He threatened us directly, saying that what we were doing was against the wishes of the nation,” said Babak Zamanian, a spokesman for Amir Kabir university’s Islamic students’ committee. “After that, the students protested even more sharply, calling him a lying religious dictator and shouting, ‘Forget America and start thinking about us!’
[...]
Witnesses say Mr Ahmadinejad also tried to ridicule the students by referring to the university disciplinary code, under which those with three penalty points are suspended from studies. “He joked that he was going to issue a presidential order for those with three stars to be enlisted as sergeants in the army. That made the students really angry,” said Mr Zamanian.
The star system is a punishment system for students who voice dissent:
Under the vetting system, first enforced in the present academic term, some students deemed ideologically suspect have been banned outright from studying.
“Students who already had one star had to sign a letter saying they would not join in any political activities before they could enrol,” said Ali Nikou Nesbati, 26, a member of Tahkin Vahdat, a student body involved in the protests.
“Students who had two stars had their enrolment delayed for months and had to sign a much more binding letter. Those with three stars – about 17 students in all – have been prevented from enrolling at all.”
Sounds pretty sweet, no? For anyone who thinks Ahmadinejad is a paper tiger, here’s one threat he followed through with. Those same protesters have been expelled and marked for mandatory military service:
Mr Ahmadinejad later announced that the dissenting students should go unpunished. Ali Azizi, vice-secretary of the Islamic Students Committee, said the wave of expulsions broke that pledge. “Many of the expelled students are political activists and were present at the protests … It demonstrates revenge against the students’ protests … In the past, questions over academic performance have not [been] considered reason for expulsion. Students with even worse academic records exist among student organisations supported by the government but they have not faced expulsion.”
The university chancellor, Ali Reza Rahai, an ally of Mr Ahmadinejad , accompanied the expulsion orders by signing eligibility notices allowing the students to be enlisted into the armed forces. That effectively makes good a threat by Mr Ahmadinejad that he would arrange for students with three stars under the university’s disciplinary code to be enrolled as army sergeants. This system has been extensively used to punish those involved in political activities on campus.
Its called Theocracy. Can you imagine the students at Berkley who call Bush a fascist, existing at a university like this?
Hat tip, Hot Air: “The lesson: when he tells you he’s going to do something, believe him.”
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